Abstract

We determined the partial pressurespJmax, temperaturesTJmax, monomer supersaturations SJmax, and characteristic times ΔtJmax corresponding to the maximum nucleation rates of methanol in a supersonic nozzle. We found that TJmax increased from 202.2 K to 223.7 K as pJmax increased from 67.1 to 413.2 Pa, while the maximum nucleation rate Jmax changed by less than a factor of 4 over the measurement range. Our nucleation rates appear reasonably consistent with measurements in other devices and are within one order of magnitude of the nucleation rates predicted by classical nucleation theory.

Received 18 April 2011Accepted 19 July 2011Published online 19 August 2011

Acknowledgments:

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under Grant No. CHE-0911144 and by the Donors of the Petroleum Research Fund administered by the American Chemical Society. Use of the Advanced Photon Source was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, under Contract No. DE AC02 06CH11357. Preliminary pressure measurements were conducted by Uta M. Dieregsweiler. We thank D. Ghosh, A. Manka, D. Bergmann, J. Wölk, K. Mullick, S. Seifert, and R. Winans for help conducting the SAXS experiments. We thank G. Wilemski for useful discussions.